Hello and welcome to this throwback episode of our fake history. Today I'm throwing you all the way back to season one

for episode four real ninjas question mark. Listening back to this one it strikes me how I was experimenting with just how

playful this podcast could be I use a lot of audio clips there are straight up

jokes in this episode but I think it's because the history or rather the

fake history led me there. Some of these Ninja stories are pretty wacky.

And if you haven't heard this one,

I don't want to ruin them for you

because these are some of my favorite bits

of fake history that I've maybe ever explored on the show.

And I know that's saying something but

believe me there are some wild tales here. This episode is also notable because

it was the first time I used a source written by the pop historian John Mann.

I really love John Mann's work because he takes complicated historical topics and makes them really accessible for the average reader.

He often weaves in a bit of a travel narrative to a lot of his writing.

But one thing you have to be aware of when you're using a popular history is that it may not be as

academically rigorous as something written for an academic audience.

Pop histories are great for getting the broad strokes of a topic

and being introduced to a lot of the sort of narratively

juicy parts of a story. So I turn to them quite a bit. However, I'm also

careful to check what's in them off of other sources. I've been burned before by

certain pop histories. But John Mann has never burned me. And in fact, I'm

always pumped when one of my topics leads me towards a John Mann book because I just like reading them.

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